The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Thursday, December 31, 2015

'Normalization' with Turkey? No thank you - Ari Soffer

by Ari Soffer

Rapprochement with Turkey at this time and under the current terms would be a momentous, humiliating and self-defeating mistake for the State of Israel.

Lifting
the blockade of Gaza - which has been ruled as legal by the UN and
which is crucial for Israel's security - as demanded by Ankara, would
obviously mark a total surrender by Israel from a diplomatic
perspective, while placing Israelis at an acceptable risk of attack from
terrorists armed with previously-inaccessible, sophisticated weaponry.

It
is a condition which even the Netanyahu government - which is
apparently keen to get back into bed with the Erdogan regime - cannot
accept.

Well,
let's hope not. Rapprochement with Turkey at this time and under the
current terms would be a momentous, humiliating and self-defeating
mistake for the State of Israel. We can only thank God that, once again,
we have been saved from ourselves by the sheer spitefulness and
arrogance of our foes - at least for now.

No, our foes are not the
Turkish people per se - although the fact that they have repeatedly
voted in an anti-Semitic, Islamist demagogue and his clique, who were
the ones who so dramatically and deliberately torpedoed their country's
relations with us in the first place, doesn't exactly emanate goodwill.

But
in the mustachioed, suited Islamists of the ruling AKP, Israel has a
foe no less vicious, and only slightly less dangerous than the bearded,
robed mullahs of Tehran.

It is a government which has not merely
spewed a regular rhetorical stream of anti-Israel bile, while its
officials air anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Rhetoric
aside, Erdogan's Turkey has been home for several years now to Hamas's
most lethal terrorist masterminds, allowing them to plot their genocide
of the Jewish state under state protection and largess, while openly
endorsing and supporting the terrorist group throughout its wars and
terror campaigns against the citizens of Israel.

Then consider the
alleged deal under consideration, details of which have been gradually
leaked by Israeli officials, most likely in an attempt to test the
Israeli public's reactions.

The one thing which is certainly a
condition for Israeli-Turkish rapprochement - being the only detail
Ankara and Jerusalem have both publicly acknowledged - is an official
apology and handsome compensation package to the families of the
Islamist extremists who attacked IDF soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara in
2010.

This is likely what Israeli foreign ministry Director-General Dore Gold meant, when he claimed in a recent interview
with a Saudi paper that "some points have already been finalized and
others are still being discussed, but things are on track."

This
condition is itself an indication of the barely-concealed enmity
harbored towards Israel by the Turkish government. Remember, the
Islamists in question were killed while staging a violent attack on
Israeli forces - which left several soldiers seriously wounded - and
were all members of an extremist organization (the IHH) which even
Turkish police have said has clear links to Al Qaeda.

(Of
course, this latter point matters not to a Turkish government which has
brazenly backed Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in Syria - but I
digress.)

What's more, the Marmara attack was only possible with
the Turkish government's cooperation - the flotilla launched its final
leg from Turkish shores amid much fanfare and official government
support. If anything, it is the Turks who should be apologizing for
enabling a flagrant violation of Israeli sovereignty and a violent,
near-lethal assault on our soldiers.

The demand that Israel
should apologize for its soldiers defending their own lives - and in the
process the lives of all Israeli citizens, whose security is served by
the maintenance of the blockade the Islamists sought to break - should
be considered an unacceptable slap in the face. It's not just a
disgraceful betrayal of our soldiers - such a craven apology would
merely invite further such attacks. It would also broadcast a more
fundamental signal of weakness throughout the region, framing Israel as
the local whipping-boy: if you put enough pressure, hold out for long
enough, and then dangle a carrot or two, the mighty Jewish state,
desperate for friends, will eventually give in to your demands.

In
the politics of the Middle East the currency of honor and respect is as
valuable for a country's deterrence as its technical military
capabilities. This, alas, is a fact our leaders seem
stubbornly determined to ignore. Each time our enemies attack us, and
lose, we reward them by agreeing to go back to square one in exchange
for token agreements we all know will be broken as soon as it
becomes expedient to do so.

And what would Israel get in
return? That is rather less clear, not least because Turkish officials
have in recent days denied what Israeli reports had claimed as the main
elements of a normalization agreement. Ties with Hamas are not on the
chopping block, while negotiations over a multi-billion dollar natural
gas deal are apparently only to begin after any eventual normalization agreement, according to a recent report in Haaretz.
Meanwhile, Hamas's terrorist kingpin Salah al-Arouri - who has been
behind nearly every single major terrorist plot in Judea and Samaria
in recent years, as well as the kidnap and murder of three Israeli
teenagers in 2014 which he proudly gloated about - reportedly left Turkey months ago, leaving claims by Israeli officials that his expulsion was part of the deal looking somewhat contrived.

Of
course, the very notion that the AKP - the Turkish version of the
Muslim Brotherhood - would be open to dropping its Palestinian cousin
Hamas seemed far-fetched to begin with. But even if we assume that
Turkey's denials are all a political ploy or the result of a sudden
about-face, and that such a deal was in fact on the table, none of these
"gains" would be of particular value to Israel, certainly not in
exchange for an "alliance" with a government as unreliable as
Erdogan's.

Expelling Hamas leaders - the incentive most commonly
touted to the Israeli media - would pose no more than a minor, temporary
inconvenience for the world's richest terrorist organization after ISIS.
Viable alternatives for a safe haven would include Qatar, home of the
Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal himself; and of
course, if all else fails, there's always Iran.

The vague
suggestion of a Turkish-Israeli "strategic alliance" in view of
supposedly mutual regional threats is perhaps more laughable still.

Erdogan
may be an enemy of Bashar al-Assad, but the Syrian dictator and his
army are hardly a threat to Israel. As for the Sunni jihadis Ankara has
claimed to be combating (by bombing the Kurds who are fighting them,
naturally): Turkey's support for Al Nusra (Al Qaeda) and other Islamist
rebels is one of the Syrian civil war's worst-kept secrets - as is his
government's blind eye towards, if not indirect support of, ISIS
operatives both along the Syria-Turkey border as well as within his own
country.

More importantly, however, is the fact that neither the
Syrian army nor Al Nusra or even ISIS (despite the latter's exceptional
PR) currently pose an immediate threat to Israel. Hamas does - and its
leadership is still warmly embraced by Turkey and, as is clear from the ongoing, intimate tet-a-tets between the two ideological cousins, still will be regardless of the geographic relocation of individual operatives.

Neither
does a weakened Ankara, squeezed by an aggressive Russia and an
emboldened Iran, and alienated by its own arrogant, failed neo-Ottoman
foreign policy experiment, represent much of a bulwark against Tehran.
In contrast, the increasingly determined Arab gulf states - led by Saudi
Arabia - have shown far more flexibility and far less open hostility
towards a relationship with Israel, albeit a semi-covert one.

The
Kurds, too - who Erdogan's forces are currently butchering to deafening
international silence - represent a far more convincing ally in the
fight against both Sunni and Shia jihadism, if only Jerusalem woke up to
Kurdistan's immense strategic potential as more than just a source of cheap oil.

Which
brings us to the final talking-point surrounding the "normalization"
initiative: the prospect of a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline to
export Israel's natural gas deposits to an energy-hungry Turkey.

For
a start, Turkey isn't the only country in the world looking to buy
natural gas, and Israel should certainly not be so quick to embrace as
toxic a regime as Erdogan's in exchange for such a deal.

More
crucially, this aspect of the talks highlights the very reason why
prospects of "normalization" have so magically advanced over the past
few weeks.

55% of Turkey's natural gas imports are currently
provided by Russia, and with relations with Moscow rapidly deteriorating
it can't be ruled out that a vengeful Putin would use that dependency
to apply yet further pressure, or even move to withdraw it altogether.
Hence, an increasingly isolated Turkey is looking for alternatives -
which, thanks to a series of misjudged foreign policy decisions, are in
short supply in the Middle East.

Yet if Erdogan is indeed so
desperate to source an alternative provider that he is turning to the
hated Zionists for salvation then why, to quote Netanyahu himself,
is the Israeli government negotiating like a western tourist in a
Persian (or Turkish) bazaar? Why should we be capitulating to Ankara's
terms, instead of demanding Turkey hands over those Hamas terrorists
still living there, stops supporting anti-Israel terrorists and ends its
anti-Israel incitement?

And then there is Russia. At a time when ties between Jerusalem and Moscow are burgeoning - economically and militarily - why risk snubbing Putin by cosying up to his newest public enemy number one?

Instead
of hoping for a return to the past in a Middle East that will never be
the same again, Israel should look to the future. As I have argued previously,
Israel is not a vassal state dependent on the goodwill of others, but a
regional power in its own right - one that is fully capable of putting
Erdogan's feet to the fire.

And if, as is likely, he opts to
continue supporting Israel's sworn enemies, I'm sure the Kurds would be
happy to repay the favor.